pethier

What? You have to renew every five years? Collector plates in Minnesota are good forever. And we cCAN drive Collector cars for pleasure. One must have a regularly-licensed vehicle. Driving your collector car to work every day won't skate. The general idea seems to be that any trip is primarily about the car. I don't think I'm likely to be tagged for dropping off at Menards for a few nuts and bolts on the way home from a blatt. One bonus to Collector Plates is that if you pony up the extra hundred bucks for a vanity Collector plate, you never have to pay that personalization fee again. I got my 74PHIL plates (yeah, two plates, even though I am not required to display a front plate) in 2008. I sold that Caterham to Cape Cod, so the plates stayed with me. If I sold to a Minnesota buyer, I would have had the rights to insist on keeping the plates if I wanted to, but that would lessen the value of the car since the Minnesota buyer would need to pay plate fees. When bought a Caterham from Illinois, I paid Minnesota about 218 bucks to register the car with the same plates I'd owned since 2008. No plate fee. No personalization fee. No requirement to buy tabs or replace the plates ever. I recently bought a Birkin. It was already registered as a Minnesota Collector car with State-issued plate number. i didn't spring for personalization, so I did not need to pay plate fees. It did come to me with two plates. For a collector car you need to ask them for two plates, or they will only issue one. If I sell the car to a Minnesotan, the plates will go with it, as their number has nothing special about it My Cayman is not a Collector car. It cost me a bundle to register it after I bought it in Iowa. I ponied up the hundred bucks for rights to put KMAN 27 on the plate (the decimal point is unofficial) and I will have to pay that personalization fee and a plate fee every seven years. I need to pay for tabs every year. I need to display plates both front and rear, which is fine with me, as I want the car to NOT look exactly like a 911 from the front.

Fixed that.

Possibly about 140 MPH, but not with me in it.

I call it a Seven. (That's easy to remember, since I have both a Caterham and a Birkin at the moment.) After that, it is a question of to whom I am talking and the circumstances in which I am asked. My brain wiring (yeah, I've been diagnosed) allows me to jabber on and on to fill any space.

Close. But no cigar.

The apparent changes at Hoosier are confusing to me. I stopped using Hoosiers because I could not heat them in autocrossing except at practice days. And that was on a car heavier than a Seven. I switched Yokohama A052 tires because they start working at ambient temperature. It was a no-brainer to start with the Yokos when I get a Seven again. Sorry my input is not a lot of help to you all in your racing sport. You might give the Yokos a chance though. They are DOT legal and have a treadwear rating of 200. I run them on the street also.

I'm confused. My understanding of Hoosier "sorta street" DOT tires when I used them on my Elise was that the A7 was the softer tire and the R7 the harder. The idea was that on cars of more-typical weights than our sevens and Elise cars, the A tires were for autocross and the R tires for racing. Even for track use on a well-set-up Elise, the A7 was always preferred. So has Hoosier changed the long-standing pattern of the A and R designations?

A pair of Race Ramps solves that problem.

No, I don't need this large a trailer or a left door for a Seven, but this one has also served for a Cayman, Stag, Corvette, Elise, and even a very-short trip with a full-size Chevrolet. https://www.flickr.com/photos/pethier/54792902149/in/dateposted/

Did you really mean to post this in a thread about headlight conversions?

The problem I see on my Caterham is that the stainless guards are very good, but do not go high enough.

Please not diamond plate. It would look horrible and not be any more effective than flat.

I believe that in the context of headlight patterns "drive" and "traffic" are opposite terms. The United Kingdom has left-hand-traffic. Most of the cars you will encounter there have right-hand-drive. The United States of America has right-hand-traffic. Most of the cars you will encounter there have left-hand-drive. There are in the USA some locations where the traffic engineers intentionally direct cars to flip for a short distance to left-hand-traffic. They are apparently not overly-concerned that the low-beam headlight patterns of most cars will be incorrect for these short distances. Presently, one of my Sevens is a Caterham which has spent most of its life in Northwich UK. I am very unlikely to ever drive it outside of the USA and Canada. Its low-beam headlight patterns are now therefore incorrect for its environment. I am going to go to a local Toyota dealer and see if I can obtain this 81110-60P70 kit.

Let's take this to private mail.

I just bought a Birkin. It has long/sweep/clamshell fenders on it, but the seller did give me the cycle fenders he had. He claimed that they were with the car when he bought it, but that he never got the brackets to mount the cycle fenders to the uprights. These cycle fenders appear to have the same BRG paint as the car. Since the current setup requires the air cleaners to be removed to take off the hood, I think I might want to try cycle fenders on this car. What this all has to do with this thread: I have taken pictures of the style mounts that are on these cycle fenders. They appear better than the ones which were breaking for the author of this thread. I wonder what you all think of them compared to the upgraded ones shown elsewhere in this thead.

On Sevens, I go with the Yokohama Advan A052 for both street and autocross.

I am certainly not saying the driver was correct insulting the tech inspectors who were trying to protect him. His attitude was not productive, but it was certainly representative of some of the culture then in SCCA racing.

I did tell them I was leaving for a long trip and would be towing. When one brings a vehicle to this Ford dealer for service (whether one goes home or hangs in the customer lounge) one gets texts about every little detail. I typically get a half-dozen or so of these messages every time. Not a peep about tire pressure. In this context I would expect nothing less than a text telling me they thought the tire pressures were high. I do find it interesting that my 496-cubic-inch Suburban had posted on the door frame from Chevrolet that the tire pressures were to be 50 PSI in front and 80 PSI in back. The F-150 says 35 PSI on the door frame. The published load and towing weights for this F-150 with the towing package with which it was delivered new are similar to those of the Suburban. I understand your position that tires give their maximum traction when inflated to an ideal pressure taking into account weight on the tire patch, tire size, tire structure, wheel size, dynamic camber at expected cornering forces, and other things too numerous to mention. The traction of the Load Range E tires on this F-150 is perfectly-sufficient for the use of the vehicle at 80 PSI. Is 80 PSI ideal for traction and wear patterns? No. Is it sufficient for preventing tire-killing heat? Yes. I ran the Michelin LT all-weather tires on the Suburban at 50/80 year-around, towing and deadheading. I rotated them occasionally. I eventually wore out a set. They were very-evenly worn when I replaced them with another set of the same. The truck towed straight and true without benefit of any sway-control devices. (The motorhome requires a friction snubber). I could not seem to get the same Michelin tire for the F-150. New 4WD F-150 trucks are supplied with "terrain" tires. I have not looked at the tires on new trucks at the dealership to see the load range. My truck was used, and the dealer (sister-dealer to the one closer to my house where I get service) had replaced the tires with summer-tread car tires with a load rating and maximum PSI rating I consider insufficient. These Cooper tires were described as the most "highway friendly" of all the Load Range E tires offered me. I tried running them at 50/80. There was a lot of sway while towing. I put on the snubber and it knocked down the terrifying sway, but the snubber has a little play in the couplings which allows annoying amounts of sway. Raising the front pressure to 80 helped. The F-150 has a longer wheelbase and a shorter rear overhang than the Suburban, so is should have less sway, not more. The only significant variable appears to be tread squirm. Maybe next spring I will try to figure out how to get Michelin all-weather tires on this truck. I really don't want two sets of wheels because they are so large to store.

It does not. It was just the best insult that the driver (who may or may not have been Jack Baker) could think of for tech inspectors for making him add to his roll bar.

I no longer have my Ford Fusion, but I did have an issue with the dealer. There were several submodels of Fusion. Some, like mine, were supposed to have the lugnuts at 100 foot pounds, and others at 150. I often after the dealer had the car found that the lugs were damned tight. I suspect that the tech failed to pay attention to the submodel of Fusion and the diameter of the studs and tightened to 150 instead of 100. Now I have traded the Fusion for an F-150 and the knuckleheads take the air out of my tires. I have load-range-E tires on the truck because I tow a Seven or a Cayman (and recently a friend's Corvette) in my enclosed trailer. The tires I got for the truck to replace the darn CAR TIRES that were on it are Cooper load-range-E terrain tires. Even with the full-load 80 PSI in them the tread is squirmy. After an oil change, I went to pick up my trailer. In a bit of flukey wind, the rig with empty trailer was all over the road. I stopped to check the pressures: 36 PSI! They sent me a survey email and I sent back an email that they had better not deflate my tires if they wanted me to send in a favorable survey. They have promised to not do this again. Do you know how long it takes to get tires this big from 36 to 80 with a domestic-size compressor?

Don't feel like the Lone Ranger. Some of these online sites are amazingly not intuitive.

So these are patterned for driving on the right side of the road? Cold be a good way to convert my English car to not blnd folks with my low beams.

I don't think I have ever seen "the stamped steel version" that looks like a MiniLite.

I have seen such additions on many race cars over the years. One such supported a Dymo label alleging that all technical inspectors engage in an unnatural act I will not describe here.

The 818 is outside the scope of this topic. I have an album of of pictures taken by me and by Kathy. The car is not in Lakeland, but near Mora Minnesota. https://www.flickr.com/photos/pethier/albums/72177720329434018/ The 818 is currently registered in Minnesota and the registration receipt has 2026 tabs stapled to it, which implies that there are actual license plates which, when the tabs are affixed, will be good through April 2026.